Everyone needs the right digital skills to get a job, grow their career or business, or become an entrepreneur or developer. That’s why we started Google Growth Engine in 2015, a collection of digital skills programs offering free online and in person training across Europe.

The Developer Scholarships Challenge is one of these programs, a partnership between Google, Bertelsmann and Udacity, to help Europeans develop the skills required to build winning apps. Together we launched the first phase of developer scholarships in November 2016, and in September this year, announced phase 2 of the Developer Scholarships Challenge offering 75,000 scholarships to beginner and existing programmers.

When we joined the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition back in 2015, we did so in the hope of helping to make a difference to people’s futures, and we have been humbled by the many stories of success we’ve heard from our trainees along the way. That includes people like Aaron, who made the risky decision to drop out of business school to pursue his passion for computer science. Looking to self-learn, he came across the Google scholarship on Udacity and went on to earn his Associate Android Developer Certification. He is now an Android developer at SinnerSchrader Swipe in Berlin and on track to fulfill his dreams of being a full-time developer.

From left: Alessandro Bogliolo, European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, Leslie Miller (Google) and Marc Sundermann (Bertelsmann) at the European Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition Conference in Brussels, where the European Digital Skills Awards were announced

Today, we’re delighted our initiative has been recognized by the European Commission, winning the EC Digital skills award in the “Digital skills for ICT professionals” category, developing high-level digital skills for professionals in all industry sectors. This is the second year in a row the EC has awarded Google for our digital skills work.

To date, we have seen more than 200,000 applications, with demand coming from every country in Europe. The initial 60,000 spots for phase 2 have now been filled and the new semester is underway. Still, we know there is much more we can do. App development represents an important opportunity for economic growth in Europe as the apps sector alone could employ 4.8 million people and contribute €63 billion to the EU economy by 2018. However, 40 percent of companies report problems finding candidates with the required skills to develop apps and one of the key barriers is access to developer education for everyone.

We look forward to continuing our efforts to bring digital skills and new opportunities and we are committed to helping more people get the skills they need to succeed and to grow with Google over the coming year.